mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Apparently not all of us are quite so smart (response to inthebluelot).

IF Hoke is using an injury to take the heat off of someone, it is not Borges-- even if you think he deserves the heat (debatable), even if Hoke thinks he deserves the heat (doubtful), I am pretty sure Hoke feels Al is a grown man and can deal with the heat himself.

More likely, he would be protecting his player, who is, afterall, still a teenager. A move which makes me admire Hoke all the more.

Denard could have gone. We need a backup quarterback and a starter for next year and I think we saw about enough of Bellomy to know that he is not it. I think this was Gardner's audition for second team QB for the remainder of season and starter next year. It was an impression audition and I think it is safe to say he got the part.

Well, it depends on what you mean by pressure. I tend to think that people complaining about Borges on the internet is not pressure.

Michigan is coming off a remarkably successful season last year, is in line for its second successful recruiting class in a row, has a 5-star QB coming in next year, is still in consideration for the B1G championship, and the "pressure" is coming because when our star QB went down, the backup did not play well.

The bit about Denard starting last Saturday erases any credibility on the subject of injuries and two-deep rosters. Complete misinformation. Now, if the idea is to mislead our opponents and to disrupt their pre-game preparation, or to cover for internal team matters in a way that suits Brady Hoke, so be it. But I am not going to pretend that what Hoke says means anything anymore. At least not on the subject of injuries and where players are on the two-deep.

If it suits Brady Hoke, it suits Michigan. They are one in the same and he's not worried about anything besides the success of the Michigan team when he speaks. We had our three years of the super coach who had to be everybody's smooth operator and the smartest guy in the room. It was a disaster.

As an action and results guy, he'd probably caution us to give meaning to the product he is in charge of taking the field and the quality of men who emerge from his program. I doubt he'd care if any of us give any weight to his meanderings to the media about subjects which aren't their business in the first place.

“First, understanding what their intent is, what our team’s intent is going to be. You’ve got to be willing to work for that. You’ve got to be willing to earn that..." 12-30-2014

I didn't say, "shame on Brady Hoke." All that I asserted was that whatever his reason(s) -- and there could be some strategic/team morale reasons for misleading in the press -- what we now know, from more than one occasion, is that what Brady Hoke says about injuries and players' status is meaningless. Who knows if it will be true or not?

I'd rather hear Magnus tell me about an unsubstantiated rumor, than read what Brady Hoke says in an interview. Because Magnus' rumors are far more likely to be informative than Hoke's press conferences. I'm not poking fun at Magnus. I'm being quite serious.

I wouldn't make a big deal about it, but for the point that Hoke is thought to be such a great and effective personality in dealing with the press and being the public face of the team. Meanwhile, Hoke's predecessor, whom I don't ever recall making a deliberately misleading public statement, was thought to be such a tactless rube in being the public face of the team.

What's wrong with the Hoke/RR comparisons? We've compared every other coach throughout the years to the one who came before.

RR has won everywhere he's coached, including in Arizona and that will come back to haunt U of M. They will be known as the one place who wouldn't back up a guy who did it by the book, told the truth, and took the heat.

Hoke and all of us enjoyed last year because of RR and you know it.

You people who have an opinion and voice it and then turn around and tell others what they can discuss and shouldn't discuss really need to reexamine yourselves!

Because you have, by NCAA rules, 20 hours to practice a week. If Minnesota is spending a few extra reps game planning their D for two quarterbacks because Hoke is known to be a lying SOB wrt injuries, it's a competitive advantage. Granted, the difference in our offense isn't that great between Denard and Devin, but still (Not sure they could rule out Bellomy starting either though).

One of my favorite characteristics of Hoke (and Carr, for that matter) is his unrelenting public support for his players. It's very rare that he criticizes one of his player's play in public, and he says a lot of things along the lines of "we have a lot of confidence in... Bellomy / Gibbons / etc." If the coaches decided that Bellomy isn't ready and Gardner is the better option, then claiming that Bellomy is hurt is a way to give yourself the greatest win probability (Gardner plays) while maintaining that public confidence in Bellomy (who couldn't play b/c "injured" rather than "not good enough"). If Bellomy's not hurt, he obviously knows what's going on, but I'd imagine that message is a lot easier to take privately from your coaches than from your coaches and the entire Michigan fan base.

But if Bellomy is not hurt, wouldn't they want to put him in instead of JDK for the last drive? Any time he can have leading the offense, even if it's just giving the ball to a RB, is needed. I don't think Hoke would keep him sidelined in that situation just to save face for Bellomy.

Nebraska, at least they should be responsible for not being responsible in preparing the backup QBs in emergence situation. Had Borges used simpler schemes for Bellomy, things might have been different.

"Leaders eat last." -- Jim Harbaugh

"Keep the guys together." -- Brady Hoke's last message to team seniors

Simple schemes or not, Bellomy can't get the job done. Not right now. He had simple throws early, and he didn't hit them. Michigan couldn't run the ball, so the game was on Bellomy's shoulders. That was a certain loss once Denard got hurt.

Personally, I very much doubt that Gardner would have been able to win that game in Lincoln had he been called on even if he had been taking the 2nd string QB reps for weeks. I'm not even sure UM would have won had Denard been healthy the entire game.

Nebraska has shown a propensity for erasing deficits this season (17 to Wisco in Lincoln, 12 in Evanston and 10 in E. Lansing) and UM didn't even have a lead in the game. I think we are just going to have to acknowledge that UN is pretty good this year. They are MUCH better than I thought they were going to be.

I look at it this way. Should the coaches have figured out by the time of the Nebraska game that DG is a much better QB than Russell Bellomy? Absolutely. And I'm sure they did.

But, in case you haven't noticed, our WR corps. has also been struggling all season--as a result of which, our opponents have often been able to render us one-dimensional. We help ourselves at WR by playing DG there.

So, put yourself in the staff's shoes headed into the Nebraska game. We have Denard, who had never missed significant time to that point in his career, ready to play QB. Now, let's assume though that the coaches know he has an elbow issue and there's a decent chance he'll be injured in the game. We can either prepare DG to play WR, where he will definitely be needed, or we can prepare him to be the backup QB, where he might be needed (and for how much of the game, we don't know either). Realisitcally there is probably not enough time to prepare DG for both positions.

Based on DG's historic performance at QB, chances are we don't beat Nebraska if Denard goes out early anyway--even if DG spends the whole week preparing to back up Denard. Therefore, prepping DG to play WR and gambling that Denard gets through the game is probably the smartest play. It's at least a defensible decision. The coaches have to take those kinds of risks because we don't have historical levels of depth. Sometimes the chips fall your way, sometimes they don't.

And of course, we don't know how much of this information the coaches actually had in advance anyway. Did they realize Denard's elbow thing was bad enough to keep him out a whole half-plus? Did they realize DG was capable of playing like he did that last three quarters against Minn? Did they realize Bellomy would perform that poorly if he had to go in?

It's too bad we lost to Nebraska, but there's no sense pointing fingers at anybody.

"You will suffer humiliation when the team from my area defeats the team from your area." -- The Onion

To be fair his line couldn't block, his receivers didn't help him when he did make the throws (and he did make some good throws), his backs didn't make plays (like you said), he wasn't being prepared for it in practice, and the only other significant game time he had seen was against Alabama, the number 1 team in the country and the #2 pass defense in the country. On the other hand, he is the quarterback and it was up to him to play well.

There was some talk on the live blog that Bellomy should come in to get some good feeling going. That made sense to me, so when they put in Kennedy I was a little puzzled. To be sure, that's not proof of anything, but maybe that explains why Denard suited up and why Kennedy came in.

Agreed. The best will play, but for all of Shane's potential, he's hardly a polished QB at this point. It's not like he lit up his high school competition every game. I expect him to become a good college QB, but not as a true freshman.